Habit is a compromise effected between an individual and his environment.

Words and images run riot in my head, pursuing, flying, clashing, merging, endlessly. But beyond this tumult there is a great calm, and a great indifference, never really to be troubled by anything again.

I had little talent for happiness.

Enough of acting the infant who has been told so often how he was found under a cabbage that in the end he remembers the exact spot in the garden and the kind of life he led there before joining the family circle.

Friendship, according to Proust, is the negation of that irremediable solitude to which every human being is condemned.

Yes, there were times when I forgot not only who I was but that I was, forgot to be.

Hardly had the glow been kindled by some good deed on your part or by some little triumph over your rivals or by a word of praisefrom your parents or mentors when it would begin to cool and fade leaving you in a very short time as chill and dim as before.